Halal Healthcare Services: Patients’ Satisfaction and Word of Mouth Lesson from Islamic-Friendly Hospitals

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the impact of halal healthcare attributes, intrinsic value, and extrinsic value on satisfaction, and explores how patient satisfaction with halal healthcare services influences word of mouth (WOM) to others. The cross-sectional survey was conducted in two cities with four Islamic-friendly hospitals across Malaysia. This study used purposive and non-probability random sampling methods. Partial least square (PLS) technique was used for data analysis of 309 Muslim patients with a response rate of 61.8%. Findings revealed that hospital’s halal healthcare attributes (β = 0.225, p < 0.01), hospital’s intrinsic value (β = 0.432, p < 0.01), and hospital’s extrinsic value (β = 0.196, p < 0.01) have significant influence on patient satisfaction with halal healthcare service, which in turn reflects the WOM to others (β = 0.692, p < 0.01). The results identified that satisfaction mediates the effect of hospital’s halal attributes, as well as hospital’s intrinsic and extrinsic values on WOM. These findings will contribute to healthcare service providers and academicians for further study to improve a framework for establishing a standard for halal healthcare service for patient satisfaction and WOM to others in Islamic-friendly hospitals.

Patient satisfaction with Indonesian sharia hospital services: Halal healthcare tool and implications for loyalty-WoM

“…Parasuraman (2005) forms a "gap measure" to compare how customers perceive a service with how they anticipate its performance, either by pleasure or disappointment (Parasuraman et al, 2005). In the aspect of halal health, the desire of patients to have health facilities based on halal principles can affect their satisfaction with healthcare providers' provision of health facilities (Medhekar & Haq, 2018;Naserirad et al, 2022;Rahman et al, 2023;Widiasih et al, 2020). Aladwan (2021) and Nugraha (2020) imply loyalty and WOM valuation of healthcare products and services regarding significance/insignificance and benefits/disadvantages (Aladwan et al, 2021;Nugraha, 2020).…”

“…Some previous studies identified halal facilities for healthcare, including sharia facilities, doctor's facilities, nursing services, medical expertise, medical facility atmosphere, and administrative conduct (Medhekar & Haq, 2018;Naserirad et al, 2022;Ningtyas et al, 2022;Padela et al, 2012;Rahman et al, 2023).…”

“…In general, the main goal of doctors and nurses is to help patients. The characteristics of a good man and doctor are described in the Qur'an and Al-Hadist (Naserirad et al, 2022;Rahman et al, 2023). Therefore, Muslim medical practitioners who follow the guidelines of these two sources of Islamic law will have characteristics that follow the character of well-ethical doctors and nurses.…”

“…Hospitals should ensure a healthy and comfortable environment, including infection control, personal hygiene, clean water, and good hospital ventilation. This facility will prevent risk for patients and health facility visitors (Rahman et al, 2023).…”

“…Observing this situation, it becomes interesting to examine the quality of medical services from an Islamic point of view. Previous research on this topic has focused more on general discussions about the quality of general medical care (Asnawi et al, 2019;Coutinho & Prasad, 2022;Nugraha, 2020;Rahman et al, 2021Rahman et al, , 2023Shie et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2018). However, there needs to be more knowledgeable about the market for Islamic-friendly medical services, especially in this case, the indicators of special services of Sharia hospitals according to halal standards, satisfaction, and loyalty intentions towards medical services in Islamic hospitals.…”